


[Give me] the Most Intricate Analysis

by Batty619



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Case Fic, Fate, M/M, Magical Realism, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batty619/pseuds/Batty619
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When A simple case leads Sherlock and John to a small village, they realize things are off. The case leads Sherlock to a maze, where things go from off to down-right strange. </p><p>excript: "This entire case and town had been weird at best and Johh wanted some damn answers!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	[Give me] the Most Intricate Analysis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AStudyInAlgedonics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AStudyInAlgedonics/gifts).



> This is my first time writing a fic down for others to read..so I hope you all enjoy it :) This is a birthday gift for the lovely and talented RaccoonRaconteur (should check out her work, its awesome).  
> Thank to my dear friend tosacrificebutknowingtosurvive.tumblr.com (check her out too) for beta-ing so this can be awesometastic :)

It was a simple case, simple yet intriguing in its own rights, which had brought Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to this small village in the country. The town was quaint and stood picturesque in the pasturelands of England, but the air was thick and the people strange.  They weren’t strange in character, nor appearance. No, it was the way they regarded the detective and his friend that was truly odd.  The men had been in town for but a few minutes before Sherlock noticed the double-takes and glances of passers-by, but it could easily be attributed to his death and resurrection a year ago.  It took John a bit longer to catch on.  At first he thought the townspeople were rather shy and quiet which more than made up for the gasps and guffaws he received when attempting to make conversation. But when Sherlock was nearly killed by a hoard of what could only be described as rabid fans, John had to start taking notice and admit something strange was happening.

 

John’s endeavors to understand what was happening in the village led him to believe it was somehow related to the case they were here to solve. The case was not particularly gruesome in design, nor was it the handy work of a careful serial killer. It was a single murder: a stab wound to the gut, the vic had bled out. There was something off about the scene however, which John couldn’t place at first glance.  Sherlock had recognized it immediately- it was why he took the case- and gave a long sigh when John finally realized the significance of the scene.  As he stood in the small, one-room flat John couldn’t ignore feeling that the killer had wanted to be caught, or at least wanted to get Sherlock into town.  John knelt down to examine a glass pill bottle left on the floor. Memories of his first case with Sherlock sailed through his mind, and he nearly missed the detective’s loud “AHA” as the other man bounded back toward the town square hot on the trail.

 

The case eventually led Sherlock to what appeared to be a giant maze. The walls stood impressively tall, and seemed to be made of large stone blocks as opposed to the green hedges of most garden mazes.  It was clearly a tourist trap and may have been the small town’s only claim to fame. The entryway was simply a large opening in the stone and a gathering of 10 or more people could be seen following a guide just beyond the entrance.  The group had stopped and pressed in to hear the guide speak as Sherlock and John sidestepped around them in their haste to seek out whatever evidence could be found.  As usual Sherlock’s stride had propelled him several paces ahead of John when John stopped. He could still make out the faint yell of the tour guide and could’ve sworn he had heard the words “a study in pink” but that seemed absurd, why would a maze tour guide be talking about his first case with Sherlock? He had to have heard wrong. John knew Sherlock was impatient at the best of time, but he also knew his presence wasn’t exactly necessary and so with a look back in his direction, John turned once again to the tour which was coming to an end at the front of the maze.  

 

As the army doctor walked, he assessed his situation. This entire case and town had been weird at best and he wanted some damn answers! The group had now more or less dispersed and was slowly leaving.  John headed toward the tour guide. He looked young, maybe seventeen or eighteen, not well built but far from heavy. The kid had red hair and looked like he genuinely enjoyed his job, smiling as he answered questions. He had an easy way about him; relaxed and confident in his understanding of the maze.  He was holding a brochure as he looked up to meet John’s eye. His smile faded away and the color drained from his face as if he had seen a ghost. Dropping the brochure to the ground, he jerked his eyes from John’s and ran from the maze before John could reach him. Walking to where the guide had just been, John bent to pick up the brochure. It was light blue and clinical in design. The cover depicted two hands, one overlapping the other as they held a deep blue anatomically correct heart.  The title read _An Intricate Analysis_. As John read the brochure, he became more and more confused and perturbed. Were he not an army man, John might have been terrified; as it stood he was puzzled and awed. After reading, he gathered his thoughts before he folded the paper up and slid it into his pocket while walking back to Sherlock.  When John found Sherlock he was nose to the ground, and butt in the air, studying something John was certain would be “obvious” although it was lost to him.

 

Finishing his task, Sherlock stood and whirled around to face John. He was about to speak when he took in his doctor’s countenance. John stood quite still, entirely too much so, and his face looked drained of most of its color. His eyes were locked onto his own and Sherlock took note of the slight tremor in John’s hand as he slipped a folded paper from his pocket. John held it out for Sherlock and commanded, “Read.” Sherlock was about to argue over the case and time, but something in the way John looked silenced him. He took the pamphlet without a word. John watched Sherlock as he read the pages. Sherlock’s demeanor went from mild interest, to curiosity, to genuine intrigue in mere seconds as his eyes darted rapidly over the paper. John saw the moment his eyes began to gleam with the light of a new puzzle as the case (solved already, no doubt) was forgotten. Sherlock looked back to John, who let out a shallow breath before both men turned to look at the maze for the first time.

 

Upon finally noticing the maze walls, the men could scarcely believe how they, how Sherlock, had missed something this grand. Staring at the wall, they stood in shock as their own faces stared back for a brief moment before the image flickered to something else. On the face of the maze before them, their memories flitted across the screen like a moving slide show in constant flux. In stills and short clips their lives played in-and-out-of-sync on the stone wall. It was amazing, terrifying to behold, and impossible to comprehend as memories, some of which they had never shared with anyone, flew by in front of them. Wherever their eyes flew, whatever wall they looked at, whatever part of the maze they ran to, they saw themselves in some version on the rock. On one stone wall John stood yelling outside of a flat while inside Sherlock was nearly strangled to death. On a different face of the maze John and Sherlock enjoyed a meal at Angelo’s before the picture changed to that of an apple, the phrase I O U carved into it. It was brilliant, maddening, and insane. Images which were not them, but which they knew without a doubt to be Sherlock Holmes and John Watson just as surely as they were, passed before them in an array of colors. Moments from cases past as well as those yet to come, lives past and future, all danced in the stones. They were shop keeps, footballers, astronauts, a thousand different detectives with a thousand different doctors, all of them Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Always together. Always as a result of injury to John. Always Sherlock leaves, to return again. Almost always lovers. Clearly always friends. John and Sherlock watched themselves, in all their incarnations, played out on the stone walls of the somehow living maze.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was the result of a dream, which was more or less the entire maze bit.


End file.
